Wasted

NOMINEE - ACADEMY OF WESTERN ARTISTS - BEST WESTERN NOVEL 2025In the Wyoming Territory of the 1880s, a nameless drunk survives throwing himself onto train tracks - and in the aftermath, earns a cruel new name: Wasted. Beaten, broken, and stripped of memory, he is dragged into the orbit of Burton Ardway, a wealthy cattleman and hotelier whose success masks deep personal wounds, and Ash Fendris, a weathered outlaw who thrives on chaos.Forced into brutal labor on the Ardway ranch, Wasted becomes both scapegoat and enigma. Fragments of his past emerge - a woman's green eyes, the sound of gunfire - hinting that he was once far more than a ruined derelict.As the railroad transforms the frontier town of Spirits Bend, the lives of Ardway, Fendris, and Wasted converge in a violent reckoning. Gritty, gothic, and deeply human, Wasted is a Western about ruin, identity, and the faint, dangerous hope of redemption.